New to Games? 9 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Zooloretto

Pip: I’m currently playing single-player Zooloretto. It doesn’t have a single player mode so I’ll explain that in a moment. In the meantime, what on earth is Zooloretto?

Zooloretto is a game about running a zoo. The aim is to collect animals, pack enclosures with them and augment these with kiosks, all of which give you points. Your zoo starts as a board with one barn and three enclosures, each of which has a different number of squares corresponding to how many camels or kangaroos they can hold (before the creatures presumably starve, turn on one another or climb atop their friends to escape). There are also spaces overlooking the enclosures where you can put the kiosks that, in a real zoo, would be dispensing stuffed toys, souvenir keyrings and emergency ponchos to stressed parents.

Silas: Yeeee-hawww! Hello, pardners. My name is Silas McCoy and I’m here to tell y’all about Colt Express, a game of action, danger and the free life of a train-robbing outlaw. Yeeee-haw!

Brendan [exhausted]: Ah. Ho. Ho boy. Hi, everybody. I hope this man didn’t frighten you. This is Silas, a fictional character I invented when I realised I was going to be late for the review. I sent him ahead with his horse, which I also created. Such is the power of the board game journalist. Phew. But now that I have arrived, I can-

Silas: Stick ’em up.

Brendan: What? Hey, that’s my wallet! No, Silas! Come back here, or I swear I’ll… Hey! Stop riding around on that thing. And stop firing your gun in the air, it’s irresponsible. Don’t make me invent a sheriff, Goddamn you!

The Opener: Sheriff of Nottingham & Chicken Apple Bread

The Opener returns with another game to get your friends into board gaming! This time it’s Sheriff of Nottingham. Would you like to see your mum smuggle five barrels of mead past your dad? Or watch your girlfriend get busted with a “cheese cart” full of crossbows? Of course you would.

This game’s got a history, actually. Originally a 2006 Brazilian release titled Jogo da Fronteira, it had little tin suitcases with players trying to smuggle cigars, tequila and ancient relics around South America. In 2011 it was rethemed as Robin Hood, before finally receiving yet another overhaul in this year’s Sheriff of Nottingham. The more you know!

Quinns is planning for his future this week, and for some reason two very wet games are involved. The dastardly Black Fleet, together with venerable 1982 release Survive: Escape From Atlantis. Who knew such an old game was still treading water!

Rumours that we develop our specials using a random word generator have been MODERATELY EXAGGERATED. Drunken bets are also involved.

One of the first reviews we ever wrote was of Antoine Bauza’s Ghost Stories, back when SU&SD was little more than a twinkle on our camcorder’s four gig SD card.

Clearly we’re getting old. This year will soon see the release of Samurai Spirit, an all-new Bauza game of protecting an all-new village. What will Quinns make of it? More importantly, what will he make of that box?

Have you heard about the box? Oh dear. We have some bad news. Are you sitting down?

Quinns: As you’d imagine, we take our time with the games we review. There are tea breaks. Pee breaks. We’ll pass around a bit of cardboard, saying things like “Feel how thick that is!” and “That’s quite thick actually”. But yesterday? Yesterday, we were in a hurry.

“PUT YOUR FINGER HERE,” I ordered. Matt cautiously slipped a forefinger into the recess of my toy pyramid, letting me wrestle a rubber band around its neck.

“OK,” I began. “We’re going to bet on some camels now. It’s going to be fun, OK? This game won an award. Now everybody sit down and listen to the rules because we only have half an hour oh jesus is that the time let’s go let’s go”

The Opener: Cash 'n Guns and Sausages and Mash and Onions and Gravy

Matt’s definitive series on getting your friends and family into gaming, The Opener, has made its delicious return!

This week Matt looks at the brand-spanking new edition of Cash ‘n Guns, a game of criminals dividing the “take” after a “heist” by “shooting one another”, before ending the video with a lovely recipe for bangers’n’mash. It’s basically the closet we’ll come to filming Snatch.

Matt: I don’t know if this is by far the silliest thing we’ve ever reviewed…

Paul: …and I don’t even know if that matters or not. Is PitchCar silly? Is it also possibly the simplest game to ever grace our (web)pages? Is it even a board game?

Matt: Do we even care?

Paul: Will we ever stop using the word “even”?

Review: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Hold on to your wallets! Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is now available. Contained within its box is the pinnacle of puzzle technology, the supreme solo game, an astonishing coup for couples’ gaming!

Hmm? What’s that? It actually came out in 1981?

But that’s impossible. There must be some mistake.

We’ve got a rare trio of reviews for you today! Paul and Quinns pop their collective collars to examine the bright dice and the big cities of Lords of Vegas, Las Vegas and Roll For It!. One of which they’re wholeheartedly recommending, and the other two they’re being very mean to.

Phew! The boys’ living room hasn’t seen this much sin since they ordered extra-cheese pizza back in ’09. They couldn’t finish the thing and had to throw half of it away! Ah, to be young again.

Review: Zooloretto

Review: Colt Express

The Opener: Sheriff of Nottingham & Chicken Apple Bread

The Wet Retirement Special

Review: Samurai Spirit

Review: Camel Up

The Opener: Cash ‘n Guns and Sausages and Mash and Onions and Gravy

Review: PitchCar

Review: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Review: Lords of Vegas

Feeds